Public Agenda Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index

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Measuring Anxiety: Summing Up the Public's Mood With a New Indicator

by Daniel Yankelovich
Chairman, Public Agenda

In the fall 2006 edition of the Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index, we introduced a new element called the Anxiety Indicator. The indicator sums up Americans' overall comfort level with the country's foreign policy using a simple numerical score. It offers a clear, unadorned benchmark of how well Americans think the country is doing in the international arena-—much the way the Consumer Confidence Index captures the public's views of the economy or the way a student's grade point average sums up overall scholastic ability.

The U.S. Foreign Policy Index will continue to offer detailed results from its comprehensive survey containing more than 100 questions about America's role in the world. And it will continue to provide performance ratings from the public on issues ranging from terrorism to trade to energy independence to global development. But as informative as the specifics are, we believe a more succinct and overarching reading of Americans' state of mind is needed.

Apart from the war in Iraq (America's most urgent foreign policy concern), how secure and confident are most Americans about the nation's course? Is the country divided? Are most people feeling confident and positive about our role in the world? Or is the bulk of country feeling anxious and ill-at-ease? We've introduced the Anxiety Indicator to gauge this overall sense of well-being.

We cannot expect unanimity in any society where robust debate flourishes, especially in troubled times. There will always be disagreements among Americans on whether the United States is succeeding or failing in its foreign policy goals. Still, it is important to know whether the country's leaders are pursuing foreign policy goals that are widely shared and initiatives that have broad public support. It's also important to know when public dissatisfaction with government policy may be reaching a "tipping point" that leaders have to address. The Anxiety Indicator is designed to highlight the degree to which a broad swath of Americans have confidence in or concern about the country's direction. The indicator will also offer a way to understand how the public's mind-set at any one time stacks up against other recognized benchmarks in public opinion.

There is a thorough discussion of how Public Agenda computes the Anxiety Indicator in the methodology section of this report, and we encourage those who want to delve into the nitty-gritty of the calculations behind it to contact us for details. Fundamentally, however, the indicator is the result of a few key steps.

Public Agenda has created five questions that we believe capture the public's fundamental comfort level with the country's position in the world:

Whether U.S. relations with the rest of the world are on the right or wrong track
Whether the world is becoming safer or more dangerous for Americans
Whether the public believes the rest of the world sees the United States in a positive or negative light
How successful the United States is as a leader working toward a more peaceful and prosperous world
The degree to which Americans say they worry about the way things are going for the United States in world affairs

The five questions are dispersed and rotated throughout the questionnaire to avoid biased or patterned responses.

To create the indicator, Public Agenda collects from more than 1,000 randomly selected Americans the responses to these five questions and plots them on a scale of 0 to 200, where 0 is the most secure and 200 the most anxious. A rating of 100 is "neutral," a midpoint neither anxious nor confident. In fall 2006, the Anxiety Indicator stands at 130—-a number suggesting that apprehension and unease about the country's international position are at high levels and that the public mood may be nearing a tipping point.

Public Agenda will ask these five questions in all future editions of the Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index and report the Anxiety Indicator whenever we release our results. The plan invites the natural question of how much we expect the Indicator to rise and fall over time. We certainly don't expect that the Indicator will ever reach the extreme points on the scale, either the 0 for confidence or the 200 for anxiety. World events and how the country responds to them will obviously play a role. Even so, the relationship between events and the public's state of mind may not be as simple as might be expected. There may often be a time lag between events and changes in public opinion or momentary surges or falls that quickly dissipate. Overall, however, we expect the Indicator to give us an ongoing reading of the shifts in the state of public opinion on foreign policy.

Another reasonable question is whether Americans' sense of confidence or anxiety is based on an accurate picture of reality. Or put another way, given the public's comparatively low interest and knowledge about foreign affairs, do the views of typical Americans really matter? Some are likely to argue that the public's current anxiety is being stoked by the media's focus on bad news from Iraq and Afghanistan—-or that some politicians are fanning public fears of terrorism for political gain. It's only public opinion, they may argue, not actual developments on the ground.

But in the world of policy making and international relations, public perceptions and beliefs have their own reality. Even in countries far less open and democratic than the United States, what the population wants and fears matters a great deal; leaders' actions are influenced and constrained by it. And history suggests that high levels of public anxiety and fear can be especially troublesome.